A Million Stories: A Flag's Life

Chief Phillip Nasseri started as a volunteer firefighter a long time ago, and he’ll tell you he never really planned to stop. He leads the team at the Orange County Rural Fire Department in Hillsborough, NC now, and when you ask him why he’s still doing it after all these years, he doesn’t give you a rehearsed answer. He just talks about what it feels like to show up when someone’s having the worst day of their life and actually make it better.

“There’s not really words that can describe it,” he says. “When you reach out on someone’s worst day and actually make it better. That feeling is almost like no other.” 

The Chief has family who served in the military, ties that go back generations, so the flag has always meant something personal to him. Not in a bumper-sticker way. In the way where you grow up understanding what people gave up so you could have what you have. 

“We’re not perfect,” he says, “but we definitely have a lot to be prideful for. No place like home. And the American flag symbolizes the freedom, the joys, the opportunities we have that no one else has in the world.” 

Recently, the team raised a new Freedom and Glory flag at the station and took down the old one. It had been up for a while, weathered and faded from doing its job. And the Chief said something about that moment that stuck with us, because it wasn’t what you’d expect from a guy who spends his days running toward emergencies.

“When you look at a flag from its inception to its end, it symbolizes a journey,” he told us. “And that journey is just like life. It starts out fresh, clean. You’re learning, you experience, you see all the things and what you build on. And at the end, all things come to an end.” 

He compared the old flag’s retirement to that same idea. “It shows its service purpose,” he said. “It has done its duty, it has given back, and now it’s time to honor it in its rightful path.”

When we asked the Chief what he thinks about Freedom and Glory, he talked about it the way he talks about his own community. American-made products, local jobs, a company that’s rooted in the same place and the same values his department serves every day. 

“I think Freedom and Glory serves a great purpose,” he said. “Having American-made products for America. They’re also a local business that provides jobs for our community, so it’s full circle. You can’t ask for anything better.” 

The new flag is flying now. And the old one will be retired the right way, with the ceremony it earned. That’s the kind of thing that matters to people like Chief Nasseri, and honestly, it’s the kind of thing that matters to us too.